Life Cycles
I finally connected with a long-time friend this morning, after several weeks of phone tag and e-mails. I had so much to tell her: things shifting at the job we used to share, milestones with my daughters, updates on plans and, hey, when can we get together for lunch or dinner to really get caught up?
She suprised me by answering her phone on the first ring -- I'd expected voice mail. Before I could even say, "Hey, it's me!" she asked me to hang on, I heard her close her office door, and she said: "I'm dead tired. Are you sitting down?"
Turns out, at the age of 41, after nearly 10 years of trying, giving up, trying again, considering adoption, trying once more and finally resigning themselves to being childless -- she's pregnant. I wanted to ask her two questions that blurred into one: "Are you OK?" by which I meant both "Are you feeling all right?" and "Are you happy about this?" She understood and answered both questions at once: "Yes!"
She described the initial disbelief and then the sheer terror that both she and her husband felt those first few days. I remembered feeling literally weak in the knees the first time I knew I was pregnant (after years of believing that was just a trite expression), and she said she'd felt the same sensation. She said they laughed and cried and prayed and wondered how on earth this could happen after all this time, and shook their heads over how this altered all their "plans" and laughed and cried and prayed some more until all they could do was hold each other in awe and fear and joy.
She and her husband are excited and scared and proud and amazed and realize they've been made party to nothing short of a miracle. But for her, it's tinged with a bit of sadness. Her father will probably not live to see his grandchild.
She hasn't told him yet -- her family will get the baby news over Independence Day weekend -- and she's not sure how he'll take it. She hopes he'll be happy but realizes it could be an emotional blow to his already fragile health to realize what he'll be missing. But she also sees that it could be a beautiful way for him to make peace with his mortality: a legacy in the making, in his daughter's womb. That is my sincere hope. I hope he makes this easy on her when she breaks the news, I hope he celebrates fully and leaves her with no regrets that it didn't or couldn't happen earlier. I hope he is able to be joyful that even as one life ends, another begins. That's the nature of things, for all time. They are all -- father, daughter, and grandchild-to-be -- part of that huge, beautiful, never-ending cycle.
As for me, I've gone around shaking my head and grinning all day at the wonderment of it, trying to picture her at full term, and then with an infant in her arms, or nursing, or toting a baby in and out of a car seat to go to the grocery store for diapers and baby food. I've thought about how their beautiful dog will react (and I have no doubt he will be perfect -- so gentle and protective!), and laughed at how much I know her husband will worry about daycare and school and then little league sports and friends, and what the first job is and college... and I think about how I worried about all those same things. And how I learned that in the end, all that matters is how much you love them and are there -- physically there, looking in their eyes, feeding them, helping with homework, cheering even when they're losing the little league game or don't get accepted to the "perfect" college -- just there for them. They can go to the best schools, eat the best food, read the best books, ride in the best cars and wear the best clothes, but unless the parents are there -- really present in every moment -- it doesn't matter. And it all passes by so incredibly quickly.
I wish I'd known that starting out. There's so much to worry about when a baby is on the way that it feels overwhelming. Learning to pick and choose your worries at this stage is good practice for the next two decades. But since every child and every parenting experience is different, all I can do is listen and offer advice when asked and let these two new parents make their own mistakes -- and their own beautiful discoveries. And if the new child happens to be a boy, a name is waiting, ready-made.
She suprised me by answering her phone on the first ring -- I'd expected voice mail. Before I could even say, "Hey, it's me!" she asked me to hang on, I heard her close her office door, and she said: "I'm dead tired. Are you sitting down?"
Turns out, at the age of 41, after nearly 10 years of trying, giving up, trying again, considering adoption, trying once more and finally resigning themselves to being childless -- she's pregnant. I wanted to ask her two questions that blurred into one: "Are you OK?" by which I meant both "Are you feeling all right?" and "Are you happy about this?" She understood and answered both questions at once: "Yes!"
She described the initial disbelief and then the sheer terror that both she and her husband felt those first few days. I remembered feeling literally weak in the knees the first time I knew I was pregnant (after years of believing that was just a trite expression), and she said she'd felt the same sensation. She said they laughed and cried and prayed and wondered how on earth this could happen after all this time, and shook their heads over how this altered all their "plans" and laughed and cried and prayed some more until all they could do was hold each other in awe and fear and joy.
She and her husband are excited and scared and proud and amazed and realize they've been made party to nothing short of a miracle. But for her, it's tinged with a bit of sadness. Her father will probably not live to see his grandchild.
She hasn't told him yet -- her family will get the baby news over Independence Day weekend -- and she's not sure how he'll take it. She hopes he'll be happy but realizes it could be an emotional blow to his already fragile health to realize what he'll be missing. But she also sees that it could be a beautiful way for him to make peace with his mortality: a legacy in the making, in his daughter's womb. That is my sincere hope. I hope he makes this easy on her when she breaks the news, I hope he celebrates fully and leaves her with no regrets that it didn't or couldn't happen earlier. I hope he is able to be joyful that even as one life ends, another begins. That's the nature of things, for all time. They are all -- father, daughter, and grandchild-to-be -- part of that huge, beautiful, never-ending cycle.
As for me, I've gone around shaking my head and grinning all day at the wonderment of it, trying to picture her at full term, and then with an infant in her arms, or nursing, or toting a baby in and out of a car seat to go to the grocery store for diapers and baby food. I've thought about how their beautiful dog will react (and I have no doubt he will be perfect -- so gentle and protective!), and laughed at how much I know her husband will worry about daycare and school and then little league sports and friends, and what the first job is and college... and I think about how I worried about all those same things. And how I learned that in the end, all that matters is how much you love them and are there -- physically there, looking in their eyes, feeding them, helping with homework, cheering even when they're losing the little league game or don't get accepted to the "perfect" college -- just there for them. They can go to the best schools, eat the best food, read the best books, ride in the best cars and wear the best clothes, but unless the parents are there -- really present in every moment -- it doesn't matter. And it all passes by so incredibly quickly.
I wish I'd known that starting out. There's so much to worry about when a baby is on the way that it feels overwhelming. Learning to pick and choose your worries at this stage is good practice for the next two decades. But since every child and every parenting experience is different, all I can do is listen and offer advice when asked and let these two new parents make their own mistakes -- and their own beautiful discoveries. And if the new child happens to be a boy, a name is waiting, ready-made.
posted by Mary at 4:53 PM
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